The Bolivarian People’s Militia receives military training from instructors who urge the militia’s volunteers to “Kill those Gringos!”

But it’s not gringos who should be concerned about this militia. There aren’t many gringos in Venezuela nowadays.

Chavez explicitly has ordered the Bolivarian militia to erase the Venezuelan oligarchy if he is assassinated.

“Sweep the oligarchs out of all the political and economic spaces,” says Chavez.

An oligarch, officially, is anyone who (a) doesn’t support Chavez, (b) lives in the middle and upper class areas of Caracas.

In Caracas, the “oligarchs” condemned for erasure by Chavez, in the event that he is killed, live in areas like Country Club, La Castellana, Chacao, Altamira, Los Palos Grandes, El Cafetal, Santa Paula, Santa Fe, Colinas de Valle Arriba, Colinas de Club Hipico, Prados del Este, El Hatillo, etc.

But these upscale areas of town also are home to many nouveau riche “chavistas,” while the poor barrios are teeming with people who dislike Chavez.

This means that if the Bolivarian militia is ever deployed with live ammunition and orders to “sweep” Caracas, everywhere potentially would be a killing zone and it wouldn’t matter much if the targets are is pro- or anti-Chavez.

It’s tempting to dismiss Chavez’s Bolivarian militia as a joke.

They aren’t issued live ammunition in the public shows of strength arranged by regime propagandists to intimidate opponents of Chavez.

Many of the photographs published in the news media and the Internet also show old FAL assault rifles held together with masking tape in the hands of older people who could be in their late fifties or sixties, and youngsters just out of puberty.

But they believe in their president. The young ones, in their late teens to early twenties, grew up during the 11-plus years that Chavez has been in power. They come from barrios where violence is a daily feature of life.

The old militia members may spark a few chuckles among critics. But it doesn’t take much strength to squeeze a trigger on a fully automatic FAL and blast through a full clip of thirty 7.62 mm rounds in seconds.